Blog Archive

Other Links

Sunday, July 3, 2011

My wife's brother has been looking for a small square baler in case his two Allis-Chalmers Roto-balers run aground. He's been on the look-out for about 2 years now, until this one finally came up. It's an Internationl Harvestor #46 Baler from the early 1960's.

I got it from a friend's brother about 15 miles away. It looks to be in good condition, but it will need "tinkering" to get it to work like it was supposed to. It was also pretty clean - for the most part - but there are always spots on things like this that collect crud. One of those spots is the knotter assemblies.

The nice thing on these balers is that, you take one bolt out, and the whole assembly rotates up so you can work on it. I decided to turn one up, hit it with some cheap dollar store oven cleaner, then hose it off after a few minutes. It did wonders on removing the build up. Now, a guy can see what he's doing on the thing.

Things will need polished up and adjusted - along with the right size twine put in, but once everything gets done up correctly, this should make a fine baler.

This morning, I took it to town and blasted it off at the car wash (not to worry, it was mostly de-crudded before I left here - just the nasty stuff was left). It's not "squeaky" clean now, but close to it. I did the same thing to my New Holland baler when I got it, and am glad I did. It not only cleaned things up, but showed me where any leaks were so I could take care of them. It also uncovered any wire or twine that was hanging from places it should have been - in addition to making it easier to work on.

At any rate, I wish I had some 7200 Sisal twine - I have to bale hay in a week or two, and I'd like to try it out. You never know, though, it MIGHT be here awhile...

The way it is now, we might need to put a boat hull under it to get it across the Missouri River to her brother's house....